7)

Martin- Standing in front of the party store awaiting his possibly painful death.

Johanson seemed pleased for a moment to not have to deal with all of this all alone, then instead looked resigned. "It's okay, I got this."

Then a stack of sigils made of prismatic light sprung up from the ground below him, Etruscan symbols for space, layer, travel, and several I had never got the chance to learn spun up to line up with each other before they all dropped to the ground and vanished.

Along with Johanson.

Well, shoot, but I guess at least someone had gotten out of here, and hopefully, I would soon follow.

The light show seemed to have brought the Antaurs?, Yeah I am going to go with Antaurs, to a slow stop before the one in the lead brought out a palm sized stone egg covered in glittery lines that seemed much more, designed looking, than the ones on the big boulders.

Then the voice came out from the stone as the lead Antaur's antennae twitched. “The fleshy one called Kevin said we may trade for more of the good food here.’”

A few of the others eagerly produced empty wrappers of knockoff snack cakes.

As it turned out seven pony sized ant men could pretty much fill up a store.

Also, they were pretty much synonymous with the proverbial bull in a china shop with things catching on their arms, legs, weapons, and armor getting knocked to the floor. Which was creating a mess along with their curiosity causing them to tear open various packages to see what was inside of anything that smelled interesting.

After holding the door open for them to file in I had taken a mostly symbolic shelter behind the counter while their leader keep a wary eye on me while snacking, one by one, on an entire box of Little Eddie’s Red velvet roll-ups.

Finally, with some silent, at least to me, command from the ant man commander the ant-guys began bringing up entire armfuls of opened and partially eaten bags of chips, candy bars, snack cakes, and some bags of sugar that had been stocked on a lower shelf for years on end while remaining untouched by collage student hands.

I dutifully rang everything up and bagged them, because, you know, even though I doubted they had any cash on them, it was the ritual, and rituals feed the various spells on the store. When their leader finally held up another one of the eggs, this one loaded up with thick silvery glittering lines and asked. "Is this acceptable for payment?"

As he seemed to think it had value, I focused on the ideogram for examine and power within a basic linking weave to take a look at it.

The stone was brimming with Terranax mana that favored the shaping of stone and earth. Normally you could only find something like it near active volcanoes and recent earthquakes since any older sites had already been well cleaned out by Seekers over the ages.

It easily had enough Thaus in it to be worth about five thousand dollars to any dealer.

I have always found it best to not cheat people, it preserves your good reputation and the people you deal with will keep coming back to do business with you rather than look for someone new.

“This would pay for everything seven times over. Do you have anything else you can offer of less value?”

The antaur in charge twitched its antennae a bit before offering "We will return six more times before we offer further payment."

Seemed fair. "Six more visits for the same amount of goods. Deal?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It did a sort of bow in what I hoped was agreement, which I returned the best I could. Then the whole crew made their way out. Aftering seeing them march over the far hill, I made my way back to Ali's office to plunk the stone into his desk drawer before going to look for a broom to clean up the mess.

I figured it would be a calming way to kill some time in a constructive way, only to find the mess on the floor turning to grayish dust just before all the fallen, trampled, and sold goods began to replace themselves on the shelves in flares of blue light.

I leaned the broom against the wall and sat on my stool behind the counter, waiting for my arcane express back to the true world.

Anytime aunt Nat.

Donovan- On the front walk of the Party-mart feeling rather sick

From inside the store, I could hear Damia call out for Linda to "...give him some water or something before he starts puking. Whoops, too late.”

Yeah, thick transparent stuff was coming up with no sign of the cheap burgers I had eaten for dinner last night. Followed up by coughing up more of the same but with red spots. "Ah crap, is that blood."

The door swung open with a clatter of bells and two undersized hoofs tapped up to me before a bottle of water from the cooler began to be waved in front of my face. The name Median, one for the road plastered on the label.

“Is that blood? It’s okay, your lungs should heal up just like the rest of you.”

I snatched the bottle out of her hand, twisted the cap, and chugged down a deep gulp. I only coughed half of it back up.

No blood, gothy girl called it.

I rolled over on the pavement and pushed my back up against the front wall of the store, after a moment gothy trotted over to sit on a bench next to me.

I stared at her foot for a moment, not that I was into feet, but...”Those are real, aren't they?”

She look at me and followed my gaze down to her feet. She blushed. “Always have been.’

“So this is all real, monsters, hell?”

She gave me a slight smile. "Always has been, just most of it's not what you were taught.'

“How the hell... how do I get out of here?"

A real smile this time, showing off a mouthful of sharp teeth. Aw fuck. “Well dying is normally one way out. But I guess not for you."

“The other ways are someone who can do magic can call you up, which if you thought my feet weren't real that would mean that it's unlikely you know any of the magi, Or you try to earn a favor from someone who can get up there on their own and could take you along."

She nodded at me. "The people whose chests you stared at and called bitches, are not going to be the people who are going to help you out without a whole lot of being nice."

I winced.

“You dug that hole yourself, and then jumped right in.”

“What about you?”

She shook her head, “Not my kind of magic, but you can still be nice to me.”

She headed back inside the building, her weird feet made her ass sway side to side like she had on tall high heels, and from her side glance down at me she didn't seem too upset to see me looking.

“I’m sure we can work, something out.” Her laugh showed off just how many of her teeth came to sharp points as well as her long forked black tongue.

I... I think, maybe, I can deal with all of that. On some level it seemed to work for me.

Cassy- Back in Khalid’s office.

I headed back into the Exchange with Kinkade right behind me.

As usual, the boss was ahead of me, tucking her phone away, she began waving her hand in front of her in opposing directions. Symbols within colored circles appearing in front of her to drop to the ground only for another and another to appear and drop down into a multi-layered ritual circle.

I use a felt tip pen to make mine, others used chalk or ash, Natalie Thibedeau bends the laws of reality to use light, and Kinkade was walking right in to take a closer look.

“Nope.”

I turned and grabbed her by the shoulders before she got too close and activated one of the various defenses my boss wove into her spells to punish anyone messing with them. Kindkade kicked a bit, but I had several inches and a lot of weight training on her. While I would not want to try that with her in her garou form, au natural meant she was up in the air, then back down on her feet outside of the room with me occupying the door.

She gave me a sharp look, then huffed and crossed her arms before leaning over to look past me at my boss, and quickly got caught up watching a master at work.

The seven layers of Natalie’s spell popped up nearly to the ceiling before dropping down to reveal in a shimmer of light a startled, and very damp, orc trooper with his gun in his hand.

Nat raised her eyebrows at that. “Might want to tuck that back in your pants trooper, no one here needs to see that." Kinkade squeezed past me and circled around to take a gander at our recovered trooper and seem disappointed to find out that it had only a gun in Johanson’s hand.

He fumbled a bit putting his gun back in his holster, a blush on his face as he reported.

“Found Martin Thibedeau at the missing Party-mart somewhere in a swamp. Which became a desert with a green sun. A group of ant creatures with spears were walking in our direction when you pulled me up. He said he was shot but some spell he miscast is keeping him in what he called a state of renewal unless he walks away from the store. Then he starts bleeding again.’

The boss's face twisted into a look of sheer rage for a moment at the reminder of her nephew getting shot before she made herself put on a blank look. “The shifting lands and Formicants, mostly harmless, give me some space.”

The big orc looked around helplessly for a place to go in the now crowded office before Kinkade pulled him back next to her and pressed him back against the wall. Taking a chance to run her hand up his tac-vested chest while she was at it. Johanson was oblivious. I gave Kinkade an eye-roll and got a glare in return.

Once again the boss began to put on her light show.